"Thanks to Datawatch|ES, people are getting their hands on information and data much more quickly and easily. Many people have said to me after even initial work sessions with Datawatch|ES, 'I've always wanted to get this data ... now I have it!'"

Lifespan, a major Northeast U.S. healthcare system, implemented Datawatch|ES to enhance departmental operations and everyday decision making. Users have easy, web-based access to reports, plus the ability to analyze report data, without programming. Lifespan plans to expand its use of Datawatch|ES as an informational system at the executive level.

Lifespan, based in Providence, Rhode Island, includes some of the best-known health care names in the New England region, including Rhode Island Hospital and New England Medical Center. Employing over 14,600 people with total assets of $1.9 billion, Lifespan strives to provide top-notch healthcare to communities in Rhode Island and Boston, while ensuring financial viability and responsible stewardship of community resources. Effectively managing the operations and spending requirements of each department within multiple healthcare sites can be a daunting task.

Lifespan managers recognized that such management becomes needlessly more complex when managers and workers must struggle just to get the information and data they need to help manage the business of healthcare. An important component in fulfilling Lifespan's informational needs is Datawatch|ES from Datawatch Corporation, a centralized, web-enabled system to archive and retrieve reports and data, quickly and easily.

WEB-ENABLED REPORTING AND DATA ANALYSIS...IN ONE SYSTEM

"We have always produced plenty of reports, but simply printing and delivering paper-based reports is not enough," says Karen Reimels, Financial Reporting Systems Manager for Lifespan. "We need to provide managers with data that they can actively use to better understand what's going on. We were familiar and very pleased with Datawatch, Datawatch's desktop software, which transforms an existing report on your PC into live data. We soon realized the benefits of deploying Datawatch|ES, which allows users to access reports stored in its archive, and then analyze the data within those reports. All this functionality is presented to the user through a standard web browser."

"Datawatch|ES addresses two important issues for Lifespan: report archiving and distribution, plus analysis of the data without any programming," says Joe Bernier, Financial & Administrative Systems Manager for Lifespan. "First, Datawatch|ES provides us with secure distribution of authorized sections of a report to each recipient. For example, we only need to run, an entire actual versus budget report once, but Datawatch|ES makes sure each department manager can see only the sections of that report for his or her department. That's a key feature."

"Plus, Datawatch|ES then transforms those report sections into live data online. The data buried within reports gets into the hands of managers and workers who urgently need it, for easy analysis. Datawatch|ES addresses both our report delivery and data analysis needs."

EASILY IMPLEMENTED REPORTING AND DATA ANALYSIS FOR ALL

Lifespan's current focus for its Datawatch|ES system is on a wide variety of mission-critical department-level management reports, including actual versus budget expense reports, payroll analysis,cost accounting, revenue analysis, inventory and storeroom reports, and more. "Inventory and storeroom activity is an especially large report," says Reimels, "but with Datawatch|ES, we can view the data from the report and summarize the results in any number of ways. For example, Datawatch|ES allows Lifespan managers to retrieve multiple months of a report, and then view the report data as a monthly trending analysis, to proactively identify unusual spending activity. Again, the user gets this value-added data without any programming."

"We can also export any or all data to Excel anytime as well. Before Datawatch|ES, a person would have to hand-key data into a spreadsheet for analysis. Datawatch|ES puts and end to that manual process."

Another key Datawatch|ES feature used extensively by Lifespan is DB Join, which enables Datawatch|ES users to view data from reports combined with additional complementary data from a separate database. "We use DB Join a lot to enhance our existing reports and make them even more useful," says Bernier. "The end result is a combined view of data from reports and an additional data source, with no action required by the end user."

"I ALWAYS WANTED TO GET THIS DATA — NOW I HAVE IT"

Lifespan successfully leveraged the business and operations knowledge of key managers and workers when developing Lifespan's initial Datawatch|ES system. "As part of our pilot Datawatch|ES project, we met with key operations people in several departments — nursing, radiology, budgeting," explains Bernier. "Together they made up a cross-section of future end users of the Datawatch|ES system. These operations people know the reports they are getting now, and what information they need to get out of them to help manage Lifespan operations effectively. Datawatch|ES' usage of reports as a data source made intuitive sense to them."

"The result was a successful Datawatch|ES pilot, set up with input from an effective team of non-technical users," says Bernier. "As a result, user acceptance and confidence in the system is quite favorable, and the Datawatch|ES system continues to grow. We look forward to adding executive-level reports, including consolidation reports, to Datawatch|ES in the near future."

"Datawatch|ES has very effectively addressed our report distribution needs, while facilitating analysis of data from reports as well," concludes Bernier. "Providing our users with secure web-based access to reports and the data using Datawatch|ES has proven successful here at Lifespan."

"Thanks to Datawatch|ES, people are getting their hands on information and data much more quickly and easily," adds Reimels. "Prior to Datawatch|ES, we might have to spend hours getting an answer to an informational need raised by a manager. We might have had to pull a tape to run an old report with the right data. Datawatch|ES provides that same information by just pointing and clicking. Many people have said to me after even initial work sessions with Datawatch|ES, 'I've always wanted to get this data... now I have it!'"

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